


Mad Hero

by carloabay



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Bruce Banner Feels, Complex trauma, M/M, selective mutism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:41:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24276802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carloabay/pseuds/carloabay
Summary: Bruce is drifting, without Tony and the rest of the team, until Thor helps to tether him.
Relationships: Bruce Banner & Brunnhilde | Valkyrie, Bruce Banner & Heimdall, Bruce Banner/Thor
Comments: 16
Kudos: 53





	Mad Hero

**Author's Note:**

> Hi new oneshot I know no one asked for one but wth idc

"Bruce."

Thor doesn't call him Banner anymore. Bruce doesn't remember when the name transitioned. The sounds are nice in Thor's mouth.

"Hi." Thor's hand is suddenly heavy on Bruce's shoulder. Like a weighted blanket. Bruce stares out at the disappearing debris of Asgard and shivers everywhere except under Thor's hand. 

"Are you doing...well?" Thor asks, folding his huge frame down to sit next to Bruce on the cold floor of the ship. Someone walks by behind them, each sharp tap of their shoes sending a thud through Bruce's head. "Fjǫðr," Thor prompts him. Bruce thinks it might be a nickname, but at the moment, it seems like Thor can't distinguish English from Old Norse, so maybe it's just a word.

"Hi," Bruce repeats. His lips are peeling like they always do, and every part of him aches and screams and burns. Raw skin. Stretch marks that hurt to touch, on his arms and chest and legs, purple and red, like tiger stripes. Creaking bones. "It'll be long," he says. Thor nods, and Bruce drifts, Thor's hand like a tether on his shoulder, like the safety cable catching an astronaut on a spacewalk, flying amongst the bursting stars. Bruce drifts. Drifts.

Forty two days now, measured by the time Tony's watch keeps. Bruce can't bear to wear it on his wrist, so he cuts the straps off and tucks the face into the pocket of whatever pants he's wearing. Forty two days in space. Forty two days of nightmares that growl in his ears and stretch every muscle in his body. Forty two days of rooms too big, people too tall, a huge body in a small one. He wakes up with roars in his throat sometimes, and he never knows what he dreams, only that they make him sweat and convulse until he wakes with the blankets twisted all over him.

He stands at the balcony with the huge viewing window and stares out for hours on end, into the beautiful void. The only room big enough, the only place safe enough. It swallows him, beckons him, and he sways away from the thick glass. Heimdall joins him and they stare into space together, two spots of amber and two circles of brown bouncing off the window back at them. Sometimes Bruce asks him what he sees.

"What's there?" (He can't bear more than a few words) And Heimdall tells him: an astrophysicist with a taste for magic, a princess with a brilliant mind, a Zen-Whoberis warrior with soft eyes and weapons like extensions of her hands, a tragic family far in the future, fighting for their own past.

But mostly, Bruce's vocal chords are raw with night terrors and phantom rampages, and they stand in the empty silence together instead. Bruce finds the stars too gorgeous for him, too unbelievably exquisite, and he drinks the sight in until it intoxicates him, or until he can't stand up any longer. A few weeks in, he tried to map them out as the ship crawled past them, but he failed spectacularly. He lay on his stomach and drew them as properly as he could, until Thor dropped down beside him with a noise like a rockfall, took Bruce's notebook, and drew the stars over the attempted map with ridiculous accuracy. Bruce isn't an astronomer, but it was some of the best star work he'd ever seen. And then Thor grinned at Bruce instead of at the stars, and the intoxication of something otherworldly made Bruce's head spin again.

The Asgardians like him. They venerate him, actually. They dip their heads when they see him and give him their brilliant, blinding smiles, like ethereal presents. They call him _Ódr Halr_ or _Ódr Maðr_ , and Brunhilde laughs and refuses to tell him what it means. The Asgardians don't touch him or hug him, thank God. They stay a respectful distance, and Bruce wonders sometimes if it's Thor's doing. He doesn't wonder long, because too long in the crowds sends him blindly stumbling to the toilets and heaving with his head tucked so far into the bowl, his hair touches the water. 

He sees Loki sometimes, strutting the place down like a catwalk model. Loki flashes Bruce smiles that hide something sharper, and Loki relentlessly teases Brunhilde until he ends up with his face in the floor, laughing his head off. But Loki isn't malicious. At least, not the way Bruce used to think he was. He just likes to play games, to cause mishap, to push Thor's buttons and rile up Brunhilde. Bruce starts to notice that Loki doesn't really try anything around Heimdall, and Bruce sticks close to Heimdall after this realisation. As much as Thor tells Bruce that Loki was under someone else's control, was tortured, was abused, Bruce can't help but feel echoes of that sickening smile from six years ago, that soft voice and taunting gaze. The very things that drew the Hulk from deep below.

On bad days, he has friends. Not many, just enough. On good days, he has people. Lots of them. The bad days are mute and dizzy, swathes of nausea and snapping irritability that he knows turn his eyes green and dull. On those days, he has Brunhilde to tell him stupid stories and Heimdall to stand with him at the window and teach him to describe the stars in Old Norse. 

"Yeah, then I tasered him again, cause what can you do when a half lizard guy tries to rip your lungs out?"

"To glitter, to shine…we say: blíkja."

And he has Thor to call him _Fjǫðr_ and hold him gently, an arm around Bruce's shoulders or a hand on the back of his neck, until Bruce's heart slows and he can breathe without grunting gutturally.

The good days are full of food and lessons on Asgardian biology and astronomy: Bruce sits with the kids sometimes and learns why the _Vanir_ eat fruit that is poisonous to every other species known, how Nidavellir was built around a forge and harnesses the power of a blazing neutron star, and once in a while, he teaches these alien children what Vitamin C is and why Midgardians keep animal companions. They're the days he sits with the Asgardians to eat and listens to Loki's stories of Sakaar with a faint smile on his face, the days he attempts to teach Korg menial games like Chopsticks, or little sign language gestures Bruce remembers learning from Clint.

"So this is a 'p'? Interesting. Looks like a snail." And Brunhilde looks on and laughs and tries it herself.

The good days are the days he thinks of Tony and the team, and Earth, and he doesn't want to break down or rip a man apart with his bare hands.

It's only forty two days in that he figures he's stopped drifting. Now, he knows, he's not an astronaut on a spacewalk. He's just a man in a huge ship, surrounded by brilliant people, who is chugging slowly back home. Someone is singing nearby as Bruce stares out at the inky black blanket of space, a song made by a group of Asgardians in Old Norse, and he knows now he loves the language. The way it moves like a poem, the roll of the 'r', the soft sound of a 'ð'. He loves it more when he hears it in Thor's deep rumble, like a roll of thunder.

"Gaf þeim vel byri," the someone sings, the flower-sweet sound of a young man's voice, trembling in the echo of the viewing room. "En þar er Þórr ekr, er stormr." The last note is deep bass, vibrating somewhere in the air above them, and it settles in Bruce's tired bones. 

Somewhere else, maybe behind him, he can hear Brunhilde and Thor talking in Old Norse, and he lets the sounds fill his ears like warm cotton.

"Ok?"

"Varð þeim ekki at orði."

"Alrit." They approach, heavy footed, and Thor gets to Bruce first, crouching beside him, touching the floor with five fingers to steady himself. "Bruce?"

"Hi."

"You're doing well." Thor doesn't ask questions anymore, just makes statements and waits for Bruce to disprove them with a shake of his head. It's a softer, less pressurising way to communicate. When he teaches, Bruce uses Brunhilde and Korg to say things for him, sometimes he spits out a word or two and gets delighted looks from everyone. Except Brunhilde, who looks mildly impressed. Mildly impressed, Bruce has learnt, means much more to Brunhilde than it looks like. Sometimes, with Thor, it is little flashes of Clint's sign language, if Bruce is feeling drifty. But today, the forty third day, he is not. 

"I am." He points at the stars. Through the glass, leaning forward like he can sink through it. "Blíkja." Thor nods and sits down properly beside Bruce, pulls something from the pocket of his pants. The star map notebook. Bruce hears Brunhilde veer away with quick steps. Thor takes out a pencil, too, and turns to a fresh page, starts to re-map the stars.

"What else? The stars make me lost for words sometimes, but you are doing well." 

"I am." Bruce sighs and leans back on his hands, thinking of all the words before. Pluripotent and osteoblast and centrifugation. He hasn't needed them, but he knows they're there. Resting. He spreads his fingers on the cold floor and thinks of grass beneath his palms and warm blue skies spanning his vision. "Støkkva. Marglóð. Bjartr."

"Those are beautiful words." Thor finishes the map and holds it up for Bruce to see. 

"It's good," Bruce says, and Thor drops the notebook to his lap, then presses the tips of his fingers to the top edge of his eyepatch. "Itch?" He asks. Thor shakes his head. 

"I am still getting used to it. Sometimes it falls off, and Korg tries to distract everyone before they see." Bruce grins lopsidedly. Thor stares out of the glass, into the void of space, and sways towards it a little. Bruce sets his hand on Thor's shoulder, and after a second, Thor reaches up and presses his palm against Bruce's knuckles, holding him where he is.

After a little while, Bruce lets Thor pull away, and Thor gets to his feet, gathering the notebook and his pencil.

"Urgent, hm?" Bruce asks, trying to formulate a question. Thor just shrugs.

"I think if I leave Loki alone long enough, it will be." Thor chuckles to himself, then hesitates, and Bruce looks up at him. One side of Thor is covered in the projection of the brightly coloured smattering of stars through the viewing window, and the rest of him is dark, dull leather and the blood-red of his king's cape. "Will you come with me?" Thor asks, far too casually. "I only have Brunhilde's company when I am dealing with matters, and she is very...salty?" Bruce bursts into laughter, the sound swelling from somewhere he hasn't touched in a long time. Thor frowns. "The wrong word, perhaps?"

"No," Bruce snorts. "The right word." He holds out his hand and Thor grips it, not by the wrist, but palm to palm, and lifts Bruce so forcefully his feet leave the floor for a second before he touches down. "Thank you," Bruce says, pouring all the feeling he can into those two words. Thor smiles and the light of the stars plays across his eyepatch and his jaw, but it's not the glow of space that brightens Bruce's vision. It's the warmth of Thor's hand and the smile on his face and the absence of worry or tension or space between them. It's the way Thor leans all the way down to kiss Bruce with an easy, familiar action. This, Bruce knows as he rises to meet Thor's lips, is the absence of drifting.

**Author's Note:**

> My Old Norse is abysmal, very sorry
> 
> Translations (I hope):
> 
> Ódr halr/maðr = Mad Hero/Man
> 
> blíkja = to shine, to glitter
> 
> Ok = and
> 
> Varð þeim ekki at orði = they had nothing to say 
> 
> gaf þeim vel byri = they got a favorable wind  
> en Þar er Þórr ekr, er stormr = but where Thor is, there are storms
> 
> støkkva = scattered (I think)
> 
> Bjartr = bright
> 
> Marglóð = gold
> 
> Fjǫðr = feather: I thought it would be quite cute if Thor called Bruce something that meant the opposite of the Hulk :)


End file.
